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When Philza’s son died, he did not leave Phil behind. Death means something different in Dapperline village, and nobody seems to know why.
For months Philza traveled the lands, going from village to village, trying to find a doctor who could cure his ailing son. He must’ve brought back a dozen and they all said the same thing: Wilbur was not going to make it through this sickness. He was already a sickly boy, prone to coughing fits and paranoia and paranoia that would induce more coughing fits. His body couldn’t handle this on its own, and nobody seemed to be able to find a solution.
Phil went out to try and pursue one more lead, and when he came back home, the village was waiting in black.
His friends and colleagues all lined the streets, hats pulled over their chests. They bowed their head when Philza walked by, offering him their condolences. It didn’t take long for him to realize what must’ve happened. It was awful timing, because sitting in his satchel was a health potion that was supposed to fix Wilbur right up. If only he had gotten home a little bit sooner. Phil marched down main street, tears pouring down his face.
He had seen nearly everybody in the village – aside from three very important people. His son, of course, may he rest in peace. But also missing were his best friend Technoblade, and his son’s closest friend Tommy.
Ah, who was he kidding? Tommy was more than just Wilbur’s best friend. He was part of the family.
Phil couldn’t afford to be sentimental when his son was dead, and he was only waiting for somebody to actually say the news.
When Tommy and Techno came running up, he expected Techno to take him into a warm hug. For Tommy to splutter out awkward condolences while sobbing himself. To his surprise though, Tommy’s eyes were completely free of tears. Techno had this light in his eyes that he only got when two things happened: when he emerged victorious from a hard fought battle, or when Phil smiled.
Those were not the faces of grieving men.
Tommy took Phil’s hand. “Come on, come on.”
Phil couldn’t stifle a sob. “Wait, Tommy, tell me– is he gone?”
Please, could Tommy just say it? Phil didn’t want to worry any longer.
“No, no, he’s not gone.”
That made Phil stop in his tracks. “Wait, what? But all of these people–”
“Let’s get out of the street,” Technoblade said. “All of them, they’re uh… I’d say that they’re mistaken about the turn of events.”
“They don’t have a key detail,” said Tommy.
“What–”
Both Tommy and Techno ignore Phil’s questions until they’re able to pull Phil towards his own home. The one he shared with Wilbur. Tommy lives just down the road and Techno across the street.
Phil was reluctant to step inside. He didn’t want to go straight in there just to see a corpse. He wanted to wait until the funeral director had done his thing, and Wilbur was safely in a coffin. Phil wanted to lay his son down to rest properly. So he stood outside on the street, only willing to go to Tommy or Techno’s.
Tommy and Techno had other ideas.
“Look, Phil, I’ll tell you what’s up,” Technoblade said. “Technically, and I mean technically, Wilbur did succumb to his illness.”
Phil can’t hold back a sob.
Tommy was immediately wrapping his arms around Phil. “Wait up big man, it’s okay, listen to what Techno’s saying.”
“But he’s not gone. I don’t know how, but Wilbur’s still with us.”
Phil wiped away his tears, confusion added to his grief. “What?”
“Who keeps saying my name?”
Phil looked up towards where the voice was coming from. The balcony on the second floor of Phil’s home.
There he stood, awake and… not quite alive. But Wilbur Soot was leaning over the balcony, raising a transparent gray hand.
“Oh, dad!”
The gray figure disappeared inside the house, and came back a moment later on the street level. He rushed forward, running towards Phil as fast as he could. All Phil could do was open his arms to welcome his son into them.
“You came back,” Wilbur said.
“What the hell is going on?”
“I’m a ghost,” Wilbur muttered into his shoulder. “I don’t know how, but I’m alive! Well, not alive, but aware! I’m here dad, I’m here. And you came back.”
Phil ran his hands along Wilbur’s back, so sure that if he let go for a single second, that Wilbur would disappear. “H-how?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know, but I’m here, and this is so much like being alive! This is better than being alive! Nothing hurts anymore, dad, nothing hurts.”
Phil backed away only so he could see his son’s face. “It doesn’t? You feel okay?”
Wilbur was so different and so similar at the exact same time. He had the same smile, same upturn of his brows. The same laugh. His skin was gray, and there was no longer a glow of life beneath it. But those eyes? Oh, those eyes betrayed that Wilbur still had some life left in him. He was still tethered to the physical world.
“I feel better than ever.” Wilbur pulled him back in. “And I feel even better now that you’re here.”
As it turned out, there were some noticeable differences between Wilbur and the person he used to be.
Namely, his memory of his illness was fuzzy. All he could really say was that “It feels better now.” Wilbur couldn’t remember any of the tough conversations they had. He was definitely missing a few things.
But he had what was important. Wilbur constantly said that he was happy.
Well, Phil shouldn’t really have been calling him Wilbur. Because his son said that Ghostbur felt like a more fitting name now.
Phil honored that request, so happy to have his son back.
He told the rest of the town, and they took it… Well, they mostly took it well. They were happy to have Wilbur back.
But everybody aside from Tommy, Techno, and Phil himself seemed fixated on the how of the matter.
In particular, Quackity was curious as to what was going on.
“I don’t understand it,” Quackity said, watching Ghostbur from afar. Ghostbur was playing some sort of game with Tommy and Techno; they were passing a ball around and there were some complicated rules involved. Phil was sitting on the sidelines, still weary from his last trip.
“I don’t either.”
“It’s obviously a good thing,” Quackity said. “I mean, look at him.”
“Last time I saw him this happy was before he got sick.”
“You know that I have an interest in this,” Quackity said.
Of course Quackity did. Quackity worked two jobs; bartender by night, coroner by day. In such a small town, he hasn’t had to work on his day job very much. Quackity said he liked it that way.
“Yeah.”
“But we have to make sure that there’s nothing too… off, going on,” Quackity said. “If this turns out to be some sort of curse in disguise.”
“It’s not going to be bad,” Phil said. “It can’t be that bad. It’s basically like my son is alive.”
“I know, I know. But still… this isn’t natural.”
“Oh I know it’s not natural.”
Quackity nodded. “We’ve got to figure out what’s behind this. But Phil, I can’t do this alone. I’m going to gather a small group willing to investigate this with me.”
“Are you asking if I’d be in?”
“That’s exactly what I’m asking.”
Phil glanced off across the field. At the ghost who looked so paradoxically full of life.
Was this phenomenon something unique to Phil’s son? Was Wilbur just extremely lucky? Or could the grace of a second life be handed off to another? When the next person in the village falls, are they going to have a life after death?
For the sake of their loved ones, and everybody in the village, Phil knew what he had to do.
“Count me in.”
A month after Wilbur’s death and Ghostbur’s birth, tragedy struck the Underscore_Beloved household.
It was a simple accident, if Phil understood correctly. A mistake with deadly consequences. However, Tubbo Underscore spent no time mourning. In fact, he went straight to Tommy, who was the one to recount the story to Phil.
“Ranboo turned into a ghost as well?”
Tommy nodded. “Yeah! I met him, and he’s like… well, he’s almost the exact same as he was before. Kind of? He’s a bit more aloof. A little bit kooky. But he still loves Tubbo, and he still really cares about Michael. Tubbo said that for a little while he was worried nothing would be the same. But it’s all been fine so far!”
“Why haven’t I heard about this?”
“I don’t know, I think Tubbo is lying low about this.”
If Tubbo didn’t want many people to know about this, then Phil wouldn’t bring this to Quackity without Tubbo’s permission. So the next day Phil found himself knocking on Tubbo’s door, with a practiced speech on his lips.
He went through his whole spiel, and Tubbo listened with rapt attention. His eyes were a bit red; he said he wasn’t getting enough sleep. He was having nightmares. But Ranboo – or Ghostboo rather – was helping him through them.
“Do you want to understand what’s happening?” Phil asked.
“Of course I do, Big Man. I’m happy I still have him with me, but I don’t know, I’m so afraid that someday he’ll fade away. I don’t want to have to deal with that.”
“Then come with me and Quackity. We’re going to get to the bottom of this.”
Tubbo narrowed his eyes. “Do you have any leads yet?”
“I’ll be honest, we pretty much have nothing, but we need people on board before we can start.”
Tubbo is clearly hesitant, but eventually he says, “I trust Quackity. I trust you. If there’s something wrong in this town, I want to know it. And I want to know if something is right too.”
That’s that. Another man recruited to their task force. Together they would get to the bottom of this. They would ensure that their own remained happy and their family got to enjoy their second lives.
They got one more person on board: The mayor themself, Eret. As soon as she was recruited, news of this force began to spread. The town had a small population, with only a little over 200 people. So when something as important as this was brewing, it was bound to make a bit of a stir.
Overall, everybody was on board. Many were distrustful of these new ghosts roaming the town. In the coming weeks, a couple of elders joined the group of ghosts. Old women were spared the pain of their husbands’ deaths. Little kids did not have to see their grandmothers dying.
Everybody in the town had their own worries and opinions, but over all, there was one common sentiment. Tentative excitement, but an apprehension about what this could mean.
Nobody could figure out how these people were living on after death. One day, the dead stay dead. The next day, their town is transformed into a literal ghost town.
It became Phil’s job to get to the bottom of this. Alongside him were Quackity, Tubbo, Eret, Sapnap, and Niki. A couple others said they might be able to help out too.
But this was a good team. They all met in Quackity’s bar late at night, and over a game of cards they discussed what their first move was going to be. The first step was to split up, and search the entire perimeter of the village.
Two days from then, Phil was setting out on a journey, just like he had dozens of times before. This time though, his destination was close, merely the forest on the north side of town. Phil wasn’t doing this alone, either.
At his side was Ghostbur, who was just as eager to “Go on a scavenger hunt” as Phil was.
“I don’t know if I would call it a scavenger hunt,” Phil said. “We don’t really know what we’re looking for.”
“But we’re trying to find something, aren’t we? Some sign of something otherworldly?”
“I guess it’s accurate,” Phil said.
“Oh, I know! We’re ghost hunters.”
That just makes Phil laugh. “But you’re the ghost here, Wil.”
“Well wouldn’t it make sense for another ghost to be behind this?”
“I guess so, maybe.”
“We’re ghost hunters,” Wilbur said, with a wicked grin on his face. Phil loved that grin so much.
So they traipsed through the forest, parting but never losing sight of each other. Phil scanned the ground while Ghostbur scanned the trees. They worked well as a team.
It was long, repetitive work. Constantly Phil found himself slacking, gazing off at nothing. But eventually he was able to get into the routine of it. He sweeped the forest floor with his eyes, looking for anything that seemed even a little bit abnormal.
He almost looked right over the clue, assuming it was another flower or something. Well, technically it was a flower. But Phil had never seen a flower with dusty black petals.
He fell to his knees in front of the odd plant. It smelled of something strong, with a little bit of spice. Similar to the scent of the deadly mushrooms that littered this forest; the mushrooms that the village was named for. Dapperlings. But this was no dapperling, this was a flower.
Phil considered plucking it from the ground, but he felt that might not be the best idea. What if the stem let out some sort of toxic sap? He had to be careful with things like this.
The flower seemed to suck up all the light around it, casting the patch of grass it sat on in a haze of black fog.
Phil called Ghostbur over, and Ghostbur was not nearly as careful. He plucked the flower straight out of the ground before Phil could even say anything.
“Well this is odd.”
Phil held out his hand. “Can I have it?”
Ghostbur deposited the flower in the palm of Phil’s hand. He held it up to his nose. Although likely deadly, the smell of it was intoxicating.
Phil pocketed the flower and told Ghostbur that they should go back to searching.
As it turned out, Phil was not the only one who had found one of these odd roses.
Ghostbur found another one before they left the forest, so Phil had two sitting in his bag. He went home, had a nice dinner with Techno, and slept for the night. Then, before tomorrow’s meeting with Quackity’s group, Phil pulled the flowers back out. He hoped they hadn’t completely wilted overnight.
To his surprise, they were in perfect condition.
Just a little bit squished from his bag. Otherwise, they looked completely healthy. A flower couldn’t survive that long without water.
The edges of the petals were the tiniest bit thinner than they used to be. A bit paler as well; more gray.
He took them to the meeting, and saw that Niki had also found a flower. She found it in the meadow right beside the forest. She plucked hers even earlier, yet it too was intact.
They passed the flowers around in a circle. Phil kept his eyes trained on them the entire time. When Sapnap pulled a little too harshly at the petals, Phil snapped, “Don’t do that.”
Sapnap was startled, dropping the flower onto the table.
Phil cleared his throat; he didn’t know what came over him. “Sorry, just, try to handle them carefully.”
“Has anybody seen something like this before?” Niki asked. Everybody at the table shook their heads no.
“I’ll ask around,” said Eret. “Somebody has to know.”
“Are you sure though?” asked Quackity. “None of us recognize them. We’ve lived in this village our entire lives, and we’ve never seen this. Phil, you didn’t see them on your travels, did you?”
“No, this is the first time I’ve laid eyes on something like this.”
“Something’s fucked up,” Sapnap said.
“I wouldn’t say fucked up,” Niki responded. “I mean, they’re kind of pretty. They smell nice.”
“They smell like death,” Sapnap said.
Niki shook her head. “They don’t smell like death. Right Quackity?”
Quackity, who should know these things, made a kind of motion with his hand. “I mean, they don’t smell like the dead, but they smell like something deadly.”
Niki frowned and pushed the flower away, seemingly put off by it.
“I’m going to ask around,” Eret said. “Anybody want to help me?”
“I will,” said Tubbo. Phil decided to raise his hand as well. Then Quackity did so; everybody besides Niki did. Niki said that she’d be a bit too busy with work.
They left the meeting more or less on the same page. Phil left with all three flowers, because Niki said that she didn’t want hers anymore. For a second it had looked like Tubbo was going to take it, but Tubbo did push it towards Phil in the end.
He held them like a small bouquet, fascinated by the black mist surrounding them.
What other things would this mystery uncover?
Over the course of a week, they asked around the entire town.
Phil passed by people in the street and in the marketplace. He greeted old friends, striking up a conversation, before showing them the flower and asking them if it looked familiar. Without fail, he would always get one of two responses: Either a “No, sorry mate.” or a “Oh, somebody else asked me earlier, but not before that.”
They asked everybody old enough to tell the difference between it and a random wildflower. In a village of two hundred people, none of them seemed to know anything about it. Well, none of them except for somebody unexpected.
Quackity and Sapnap’s fiance, Karl. Of all people, he was the one who said he might have a clue. Quackity was the one who said he thought nobody would recognize it. Phil got a good laugh from the irony.
So Karl was brought into their next meeting, and handed one of the roses. He gazed at it thoughtfully, turning it over in his hand. He ran his fingers along the petals and then along the stem, carefully avoiding cutting his own finger on the thorns.
“Karl?” Sapnap prompted, nudging him in the shoulder.
“Oh, yeah. This is um, this is familiar alright.”
“Familiar how?” asked Tubbo.
Karl opened his mouth to answer, but nothing came. Instead, he kept inspecting the flower, as if he expected something to change.
“I um… I saw it in a book,” Karl eventually said.
The rest of them looked at each other in confusion. A book?”
Once again, Sapnap prompted, “What kind of book?”
“Well, it was… it was a storybook. Book of short stories, rather. They all had different characters, different settings, and took place in different times. The one thing they all had in common was the main character. One of the places he traveled to was a town a lot like this. It was named, um… Galerina village. And there was an illustration of this type of flower.”
Karl set the flower down, pushing it back to Phil. Phil took it and asked, “What was it about then? What was the plot?”
Karl looked him straight in the eyes. A complicated emotion crossed his face. Karl was an expressive man, but he would probably be oddly good at poker, if that made sense. He was obviously thinking a lot, but the subject was a mystery.
“It was about a man who fell in love with death.”
“How?” Phil asked. How could somebody ever come to love such a concept?
“Well, he said that she was a very beautiful woman.”
In Karl’s story, apparently, Death could be found by following the wither roses. Apparently, that’s what the flowers were named.
So a search party was formed. Phil was alone this time, traipsing through the woods. He went to where he first found the flower, then he pressed on deeper. It took less time to find a flower than it did last time, now that he knew what to look for. He made sure to look carefully at the shadows.
Phil found one. He searched a while longer, and he found a second. He broke off the thorns and collected them in his pocket, the petals hanging out. With each one, the next was soon to come, and they seemed to be following a line.
Eventually, there were so many that Phil stopped picking them. If he wanted more, he knew where to come back to now.
He paced along this path of flowers, making sure not to step on them. His walk had to become more and more careful.
When the sun was low in the sky, casting long shadows through the forest, Phil saw it. A small clearing, where the grass was enveloped in fields of the flowers. He could not see inside the clearing, even as he grew closer. The shadows were too thick.
The shadows did not match the shape of the trees. In fact, the shadows looked to be cast by nothing at all.
Phil had no choice but to carry on if he wanted to know what was inside this clearing.
So Phil broke through the dense trees, beating back branches and bushes. He tried to take care of the flowers but at this point, he couldn’t avoid stomping on a few. He hoped that whatever – or whoever – resided there didn’t mind that much.
At long last, Phil got past the last tree, and he was in the clearing of shadows. He looked down at the ground at first, pushing through the flowers carefully. It was impossible to avoid them now, but he still tried his best, so scared to mess things up.
He looked up slowly, and took in the sight in the center of the clearing.
A woman was sleeping on a bed of flowers. Her face was covered by a large floppy hat, and she was resting her head on her arms. Her black hair splayed out over her arms and the roses, curling at the ends. She wore a flowing black dress that fluttered slightly in the wind, even as she slept.
Phil sucked in a sharp breath and held it, afraid to make a tiny noise.
The most striking thing about her was that she was about twice the size of a normal human. She looked as if she could get up and lift Phil into her hands. Place him up on the top of a tree, so that he could see the world.
Phil began to back up, so sure that he was intruding on something – but then the woman started to move.
She picked up her head, moving to set her massive hat right. She revealed a beautiful face; deep brown eyes and soft lips. She blinked a couple times, and yawned. The yawn was contagious, and Phil couldn’t help but do the same, and he accidentally drew attention to himself.
Her large eyes matched his, and Phil had to shy away.
The woman stretched a little bit more, and then she sat up. She asked, “Are you from Dapperling village?”
“Why– why yes, I am.”
That pulled a reaction out of her. A small gasp, and a little bit of a smile.
“I didn’t know if any of you would find me,” she said. “I was hidden pretty far into the woods. What is your name?”
“Philza,” he answered immediately. Her voice was sweet, soothing to his nerves like honey down a sore throat. “Who are you?”
“Do you want my name or my title?”
“Could you give me both?”
She smiled. “Of course I can. I was never given a name, but I quite like to be called Kristin. But most people would know me as Lady Death.”
Karl said that the man found Death quite beautiful.
“Can you come closer?” Kristin asked. Who was Phil to refuse?
Phil paced forward, careful to brush away the flowers with his shoes rather than stepping on them. Beckoned by her gesture, Phil held out his hands. She took them. Kristin’s hands were cold; soothing on the hot summer day. Tension drained out of his shoulders.
“You’re Lady Death?”
“In a sense,” Kristin said. “I’m not the only one. Many do the same job as me. There’s a lot of people on this Earth. But I am your Lady Death.”
“Were you the one who saved my son?”
She turned her head a bit in confusion. “Was he the one who was sickly? The one who evaded me for so long?”
“Yes, that was him. That’s my Wilbur.”
“He was the one who drove me to do this,” Kristin said. She plucked a flower, holding it between her index finger and her thumb. She brought it up to her nose to smell, smiling as she did so.
“Why?” Phil wasn’t sure if he should ask that. Would she take kindly to being questioned? He wasn’t trying to question her judgment. He was in fact doing the opposite. He wanted to know why she so readily decided to do their village a kindness. Wasn’t death supposed to be cruel? So often it took people before they had a chance to truly live.
“I hated to see people suffer,” she said simply. “And he was so happy to see his father again.”
“What’s the catch?” he had to ask.
“The catch?”
“What are you not telling me? What was the price of Wilbur’s life? And of Ranboo’s?”
She smiled slightly. “There is no catch.”
“Why would you do us such a kindness?”
“Because I’ve wanted to for so long.” She gripped Phil’s hands just a little bit tighter. Reassurance. “I knew there should be a better way, but I was scared. I was scared I would cause mayhem and panic. I didn’t know what you humans would do without me there to watch. But I wanted a rest, and I wanted to relieve you of a stress that wasn’t necessary. There was another option. I just had to get creative.”
“Why was death necessary at all?”
Kristin looked up into the sky, which was quickly starting to grow dark. “Because humanity is not as kind as the universe is. You would tear each other apart if you didn’t have boundaries. But a little village like yours? A small town of people who did nothing wrong? I could save them. You all are going to be at peace forever.”
“Will you stay with us?” Phil asked. “Will you enjoy that peace alongside us?”
“Can I?”
“Of course you can.”
Kristin began to stand. She rose above Phil, proving her stature impressive. Phil stumbled back, surprised by her grandeur despite knowing that she must be like. But Kristin kept a hold of his hands, keeping him standing.
“I would like that.”
The mystery of Dapperling Village’s undead was solved that night. It was no source of evil. It was no cause for panic.
Phil led Kristin by the hand through the forest. The trees parted to let her through. They talked under the moonlight, discussing the nature of humanity and this little village.
The mystery wasn’t anything bad. The answer was simply a goddess who decided there was no need to be cruel.